By STACEY PLAISANCE Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - An oil company exploration crew's chance discovery of a 200-year-old shipwreck in a little-charted stretch of the Gulf of Mexico is yielding a trove of new information to scientists who say it's one of the most well-preserved old wrecks ever found in the Gulf.
"When we saw it we were all just astonished because it was beautifully preserved, and by that I mean for a 200-year-old shipwreck," said Jack Irion, maritime archaeologist with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in New Orleans.

Exposure to chemical dispersants BP used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill left a commercial diver with seizures, unable to walk and going blind - and two members of his dive team committed suicide, the man claims in Harris County Court.

David Hogan and his wife sued BP and NALCO Co. - which made the Corexit oil dispersants - and a host of other defendants, including Halliburton, Transocean, ConocoPhillips, Xplore Oil & Gas and Stuyvesant Dredging Co.

NEW ORLEANS — By arresting a former BP engineer Tuesday, federal prosecutors for the first time showed their hand in the Gulf oil spill case, saying they were probing whether BP PLC and its employees broke the law by intentionally lowballing how much oil was spewing from its out-of-control well.

When the settlement was first negotiated in March, BP executives said they expected to pay $7.8 billion from a $20 billion fund the company set aside to pay for costs associated with the spill. According to a statement from the company's website posted yesterday, the settlement has been finalized.

By Neela Banerjee, Washington Bureau April 17, 2012, 6:24 p.m. A new report gives lawmakers a D grade for failing to enact legislation responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster two years ago. The Obama administration and the oil industry both get higher grades for taking steps to prevent a repeat. Who didn't see this coming...? read more LA Times

Al Jazera: Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

Dahr Jamail

New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."